Thursday, January 09, 2014

I've taken dozens of art-related workshops and classes over the past 50 years, since my first one one day workshop at the Embroiderers Guild in London, England in 1966. I've had loads of fun with like-minded friends and learned a lot about making art, but I've also wasted time and money by not treating the time seriously...mostly because of lack of preparation and practice. But I have gotten smarter as I've matured and finally figured out how to make the most of the workshop experience.EmptyEasel.com has just published my article about this subject. Hop over to read it HERE.

I'd love to hear about how you prepare and practice when you take a workshop.

Art Tip: Removing acrylic from hands

Use ordinary hand sanitizer to quickly remove acrylic paint and medium from your hands. The alcohol in the sanitizer dissolves the acrylic. Wipe well with a paper towel and then wash with soap and water.

Art Tip: brush cleaning

As I work with acrylic medium for glue or with acrylic paints I stand my brushes in a bucket of water on my work table and give them a soap and water cleanup every day or so. But eventually my brushes get gunky and sometimes I forget to clean them. That's when I clean them with Murphy's Oil Soap. I keep an inch of MOS mixed 1:1 with water in a tall plastic tub (Feta from Costco) and put caked brushes in that solution overnight. By the next day the soap has softened the brush and with a bit of elbow grease I can get the brushes back to useable. This also works for brushes used with oil paint. I gave up using oils but wanted to save those good brushes and Murphy's Oil Soap came to the rescue. Get it at the grocery store.